Integrative functional genomics identifies regulatory mechanisms at coronary artery disease loci.

Miller CL, Pjanic M, Wang T, Nguyen T, Cohain A, Lee JD, Perisic L, Hedin U, Kundu RK, Majmudar D, Kim JB, Wang O, Betsholtz C, Ruusalepp A, Franzén O, Assimes TL, Montgomery SB, Schadt EE, Björkegren JL, Quertermous T

Nat Commun 7 (-) 12092 [2016-07-08; online 2016-07-08]

Coronary artery disease (CAD) is the leading cause of mortality and morbidity, driven by both genetic and environmental risk factors. Meta-analyses of genome-wide association studies have identified >150 loci associated with CAD and myocardial infarction susceptibility in humans. A majority of these variants reside in non-coding regions and are co-inherited with hundreds of candidate regulatory variants, presenting a challenge to elucidate their functions. Herein, we use integrative genomic, epigenomic and transcriptomic profiling of perturbed human coronary artery smooth muscle cells and tissues to begin to identify causal regulatory variation and mechanisms responsible for CAD associations. Using these genome-wide maps, we prioritize 64 candidate variants and perform allele-specific binding and expression analyses at seven top candidate loci: 9p21.3, SMAD3, PDGFD, IL6R, BMP1, CCDC97/TGFB1 and LMOD1. We validate our findings in expression quantitative trait loci cohorts, which together reveal new links between CAD associations and regulatory function in the appropriate disease context.

NGI Uppsala (SNP&SEQ Technology Platform) [Service]

National Genomics Infrastructure [Service]

PubMed 27386823

DOI 10.1038/ncomms12092

Crossref 10.1038/ncomms12092

pii: ncomms12092
pmc: PMC4941121